All kinds of cool ways to get your movie made without breaking the bank...

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Deal Alert: Vegas Pro 8 for $129!

I'm a big fan of Sony's Vegas products since way back when they were Sonic Foundry's Vegas products. A video editor created from the guts of an audio editor, Vegas is my favorite editing program, and a great tool for PC users. It's superb audio tools have long been praised, and the thing has a very shallow learning curve. It's great for the short school project or feature film. All versions of Vegas have been favorably reviewed everywhere, so I won't beat a dead horse (I give it ten thumbs up!), I'll just keep riding it.

Even if you shelled out full retail ($599, packaged) Vegas Pro 8 would be worth every penny. The good news is that I found a smokin' deal from B&H Photo Video (one, if not THE most reputable online equipment house) that gives you a Vegas Pro 8 CD for $129. I was looking to upgrade (which would cost $249), but opted for this instead, and I'm glad I did.

There are some disclaimers. This is only the installation CD (authentic, with legit serial number) sans any paper packaging, extras, or documentation. Adequate instructions can be found within the 'help' menu inside Vegas, so this is inconsequential, especially if you already know the software. Also be aware that this is only the Vegas editor, and doesn't include DVD Architect, Sony's authoring program. I have never liked Architect (I much prefer DVDlab), so this also wasn't a problem. You still get the excellent audio suite, including 5.1 surround mixing, and the Dolby Digital encoder (which used to be a separate purchase).

The CD contains the 'a' version of the software, and upon installation, I was informed that 'b' was available. The most current version of Vegas now sits happily on my new laptop, fully functional.

Another bummer is that B&H is about to go on holiday, being closed from Friday, April 18 to Sunday April 27. All orders received after 9:00am today will be shipped after they reopen. This will just mean you'll have to wait an extra week (you can still place an order), but if you're like me, waiting sucks.

Vegas Pro 8 is really an awesome product. I love using it, and for the super cheap price of $129, you can get a professional level product that costs the same as the entry level stuff. For me, it was a no-brainer.

4 comments:

Surprisingly enough, I had never heard of it until you blogged about it. But based on your description and what I dug up on the net, it seems to be perfect for my needs.

Since you've used it for quite a while, have you developed any pet peeves? Anything that annoys you about it or doesn't quite make sense? You know, those little things that we tend to find when we use the same software for a long, long time.

Oh and does it have any color correction tools similar to, say, Magic Bullet?

Vegas does have color correction, including the standard three color wheels that are pretty familiar.

I don't really have any beefs, but why not see for yourself? One thing I failed to mention in my post is that you can try a fully-functioning demo for 30 days. Click here to download the Vegas Pro 8 demo.

I used to edit on Vegas; it got me started and now I edit full-time. I use FCP, and generally like it, but there are a few things I really miss.

TrackFX (gold!), the way it does transitions, the flexible UI, best-of-class audio tools, build-in 3D space, and very fast rendering are all good reasons to use it. I found it quite fast back in version 3, on much slower hardware. Today's hardware and some decent RAM and it's the best budget editing software you can get. I've heard of some stability issues recently, but they do update it frequently.